When I moved to LA in 1986, I saw my first movie at this theater. It was Touch and Go with Michael Keaton and I ate at the Black Angus before the show. I always wondered what happened to it as I moved into LA proper and never got back to see another film here. I remember it as being a standard theater, that was clean, well run etc.

I worked at this theater around 1988-1990. A fun first job, most of the staff were high school students from AHS and SGHS. Was one of the busiest in the Edwards circuit at the time, great location with shopping and a Black Angus right across the street. Movies that had poor attendance at the Monterey Mall 3plex or the Temple City 4plex usually did well if they got transferred to Alhambra Place.

Popcorn was the best tasting I’ve ever had (was popped in coconut oil & served with real butter). Lobby was a symmetrical and functional design in the NW corner of the rectangular building, box office and concessions were back to back. Staircases at each end of the lobby led up to video games, restrooms, & had windows for the public to see some of the projection equipment.

All 5 auditoriums featured Dolby surround sound and were nicely proportioned but not very decorative: simple red drapes covering the walls, red screen curtains that were raised vertically to the ceiling, recessed ceiling lights aimed at the sidewalls for intermission lighting and white tivoli lights for aisle lighting.

Auditorium #1 seated 500+, had a 50' wide screen, and had a simplex 35/70mm projector head (we never did show a 70mm print while I was there tho). Auditoriums #2-#5 had Century 35mm projector heads. #1, #2, #5 had motorized masking for showing flat or cinemascope prints. All 5 projection systems had Christie lamphouses, automation, & platter systems.

I don’t recall the exact year the Alhambra Place 5 was opened, but I believe it was 1984 0r 1985. It was part of Alhambra’s Central Business District Urban Renewal Area. Three square blocks of downtown Alhambra were demolished and rebuilt over a period of a few years in the early 1980s. This modern cineplex thus lasted no more than twenty years.

Pictures of the Alhambra Place have been posted at Cinema Tour:http://www.cinematour.com/tour.php?db=us&id=1830
I found it interesting that the arch motif used in this building, and in the Atlantic Palace 10 built a few years later, appears to have been designed to echo the arch above the entrance of the old Alhambra Theatre (which occupied the site of the Atlantic Palace until destroyed by an earthquake in 1987.) The old Alhambra was built in 1924, so it lasted more than three times as long as the Alhambra Place.